The present inventive concept herein relates to optical communication systems, and more particularly, to an optical network unit minimizing power consumption and a method of saving power thereof.
In an illustration of optical communication system, an optical network unit (ONU) in a fiber to the home (FTTH) connects a subscriber terminal (for example, a personal computer (PC), a notebook computer, etc.) to a network. If the optical network unit (ONU) does not switch off when traffic does not exist, it may have a relatively long standby time as compared with a time during which traffic exists by internet use of subscriber.
To achieve this, various methods of saving power in a next generation fiber to the home (FTTH) have been suggested. The suggested methods of saving power control only an operation state of optical transmission-reception module block in charge of the connection to a fiber to the home (FTTH) in an optical network unit (ONU) depending on whether traffic exists or not.
However, an optical network unit (ONU) includes various functional blocks besides the optical transmission-reception module block. All but the optical transmission-reception module block consume power continuously even when traffic does not exist. Thus, there may be a limitation of saving power only by controlling the optical transmission-reception module block to save power in the existing optical network unit (ONU).